China is leading the way in finding the cause of nearsightedness, or myopia, using smart wear and big data to help.

Chinese researchers will head a high-profile international collaboration relying on AI and data analytics to find the mechanism behind environmental factors that cause myopia, according to Xinhua.

Myopia is a growing global concern, especially in East Asia where it affects about 80 percent of 18-year-old students, says a 2012 study in The Lancet. The condition can even lead to more serious diseases such as glaucoma and retinal detachment, eye expert Xu Xun told SCMP.

Conventional wisdom was that reading or staring at screens for too long were the primary culprits, but a growing body of evidence in recent years suggests that exposure to strong or low lighting is linked to eye growth – myopia is the result of a longer eyeball – in children. This has led some to conclude that more time spent outside in natural light would decrease the risk of getting myopia. Therefore, the mechanism pathway of how light intensity contributes to this lengthening will be a target of study.

Although many corrective options such as eyeglasses and contacts have developed over the years, little is known about how environmental factors such as ambient light influence the eye. Previous studies linking less myopia with more time spent outdoors relied on questionnaires, in which people did not accurately recall their experiences, notes research in Investigative Ophthalmology & Visual Science.

Therefore, the collaborative project aims to use smart wear instead of self-reporting to measure a person’s surroundings. The Xinhua article states that a sensor called the "Clouclip," yunjia in Chinese, will be used to record data.

According to the product's website, the "Clouclip" can be attached to the frames of eyeglasses while a person reads or stares at a screen. The site also says that it can detect the brightness of your surroundings, the angle of your head tilt, and time spent outdoors. It even vibrates if you spend too long looking at something. All this data, of course, can be tracked in an accompanying app for analysis, a convenience that's central to the project.

With projections that half the global population will have myopia by 2050, the stakes are higher than ever for researchers to crack the problem.